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  “I…um…” I started to sit up and close my legs.

  Michael seemed to sense my change of mood because he sat back and let me, withdrawing his fingers slowly from my pussy as I watched.

  “You okay?” he asked softly.

  “Sure. Of course. I’m fine.” But the words came out sounding jerky and strange, even to me. I got up quickly, and pulled on my discarded panties as fast as I could. Then I smoothed down the skirt of the sundress and the oversized t-shirt. Really, I had to make getting some new clothes a priority. I couldn’t keep wandering around looking like a thrift-store reject. I was a slayer—I had principles.

  Oh really? A slayer who lets a vampire go down on her has principles all of a sudden?

  I shoved the guilty thought aside irritably.

  “Does this mean you’re going to push me away again?” Michael asked.

  “Push you away?” Somehow I found that I couldn’t quite meet his eyes.

  “You know what I mean.” He rose smoothly and tried to put his arms around me but I stepped aside. He sighed. “Kate—”

  “Can we please not do this right now?” I asked, hoping to cut him off before he really got going. “I’m really not in the mood to talk relationship crap when we’ve got so much on our plates.”

  “Relationship crap, huh?” There was anger burning in his green eyes now, and hurt that I didn’t want to see.

  “I mean, we have to find a way to get from here to Wales with no money, no passport—”

  “I brought mine, actually. My passport, I mean,” Michael said mildly.

  “You did? Why?”

  He shrugged. “It was already packed in the bag I was taking. Remember I told you I had plans to visit relatives in Europe?”

  “Oh, right. Well that takes care of you.” I sighed. “I suppose I can use my passport, although I really don’t want to. I mean, what if the Monsignor has it flagged somehow?”

  Michael frowned. “Can he do that? Does he have that much influence—that much power?”

  “I don’t know.” I paced back and forth, running my hands through my hair. “I don’t know anything about him—not really.” Which made me feel stupid all over again considering that I had been working for him for the past four years.

  “Well, I think we can assume he’s pretty bad news considering even Wellesandra was afraid of him,” Michael said thoughtfully. “She doesn’t seem like someone who scares easily.”

  I bit back a frustrated groan.

  “And to think, she was who Uncle Harry sent me to for help! What was he thinking?” I ran a hand through my hair again. “When he said I could come here if I was in trouble and look in the family Bible, this wasn’t what I thought he meant.”

  “What were you expecting to find?” Michael asked.

  “I don’t know—something more substantial than an incomplete family tree and directions to the local snake-lady.”

  He walked over to bookcase.

  “Why don’t we look again?”

  “Sure, if you want.” I shrugged. At least I was feeling stronger now and more in control of myself than I had since Michael had bitten me in snake-lady’s cave. I wondered if that had something to do with the way he’d tasted me. That which wounds can also heal…

  “Hey, looks like we missed something.”

  I turned to see Michael holding a fat envelope in one hand.

  “What is it?” I took it from him. “Where did you find it? I swear I looked all through that damn Bible.”

  “It wasn’t in the Bible—it was behind it, half hidden behind some of the other books. It must have fallen out.”

  On the outside of the envelope, my name was written in Uncle Harry’s familiar handwriting. I tore it open with trembling hands and found a stack of hundreds, a passport with my picture and the name Cassandra Jakes and a credit card in the same name. The passport photo was of a younger me with longer hair, but I thought it shouldn’t be a problem.

  “Wow,” Michael murmured—he was staring over my shoulder. “Uncle Harry comes through again.”

  “In a big way.” I let out a breath that was shaky with relief. Until that moment, I don’t think I’d realized how very trapped and out of options I had felt.

  “I wish I could have met him,” Michael said quietly. “I think I would have liked him.”

  “He would have liked you to,” I said without thinking. “I mean except for…” I trailed off but Michael finished for me.

  “Except for the whole me being a vampire thing?”

  “Yeah, that.” I sighed and shut the envelope after making sure the credit card was still in date—it was. “Well, now all we have to do is get to Dulles International which I’m pretty sure is the nearest airport, and get ourselves to Wales. Maybe there we can get some answers.”

  “Maybe,” Michael echoed and yawned. “But not tonight. It’s been a hell of a long day, Kate. Can’t we grab a shower and a few hours sleep? I’m beat.”

  I opened my mouth to say that we could sleep on the plane…and then shut it again. I can never sleep on those damn international flights where you’re crowded into the plane like a bunch of sardines. Also, Dulles was a couple hours drive from where we were and even though I was feeling considerably perkier than I had been an hour ago, I still didn’t relish the idea of getting back in the car for another road trip.

  “This is a safe house, right?” Michael asked, seeming to catch the drift of my thoughts. “We checked it out. Nobody knows we’re here. There’s nobody but you…and me.” As he spoke the last word, he cupped my cheek. “Kate,” he murmured. “I’d really like to hold you tonight.”

  My heart stuttered in my chest.

  “I…I don’t think—” I began.

  “Just hold you—nothing else,” he said.

  I knew I ought to tell him no, tell him we were going to get back in the car and head for Wales tonight to get some answers. But there was something about the feel of his big, warm hand on my cheek and the look of yearning in his glowing green eyes…something that made me say,

  “All right. I guess…a shower and a couple of hours sleep can’t hurt.”

  I had never been more wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Child…” The thin, whispery voice invaded my dreams, making me turn uneasily in my sleep. “Child, it is I. Listen to me…”

  I turned again, trying to get comfortable, pressing my back and behind against Michael’s warm side. I wanted to snuggle against him and feel safe and comforted as I had earlier that night.

  Though he’d said we would just hold each other, in the darkness it had seemed easier to do more than just that. Somehow I had found my oversized t-shirt pushed up and his big hands and hot mouth all over my body. I told myself I shouldn’t let him but I couldn’t seem to help myself. It was as though something inside me had been woken up when he bit me on my slayer mark—some deep need or hunger refused to go back to sleep.

  Michael had ended up between my thighs again, going down on me for the second time and then I returned the favor, savoring the feel of his long, hard shaft so silky and hot in my palm and so salty and delicious against my tongue.

  “God, Kate,” he moaned as I made him come, relishing the salty taste of his seed in my mouth. “God, I want you so much. I’ll never stop wanting you!”

  I had the feeling that he’d wanted to say something other than “want” but had pulled himself back at the last minute, maybe from fear that I wouldn’t return his sentiment. It was probably a good assumption although who knew what I might or might not have said there in the comforting darkness of the safe house? I was changing somehow, it seemed—changing into someone my old, hard, sarcastic self might not even recognize. Or anyway, it felt like that in the secret quiet of the night.

  The only thing we hadn’t done—the place I’d drawn the line—was actually making love. I told myself that changed or not, I couldn’t let myself go that far—couldn’t make love with a vampire.

  Even if that vamp